Mr Elop (Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s business division) said recent meetings with customers showed strong interest in upgrading to online software applications, despite worries that a global recession would dampen technology spending.

“We may have underestimated the extent to which customers will move in this direction,” he said.

How many other people out there (especially traditional resellers) have underestimated this as well? Even if you are not planning on offering anything from the cloud you need to ensure that you stay abreast of what is happening. Simply writing off cloud computing as a flash in the pan doesn’t work any more. I’m pretty certain that sooner or later all customers are going to start asking about services from the cloud and as an IT provider if you can’t answer them then they are just going to find these answers else where aren’t they? Do you really want your customers going elsewhere for IT advice?

The general rule is that change happens slower than we expect but when things do change they happen in a way we could have never imagined. I reckon this is what is going to happen with cloud computing.